10:59am

Planet Money

Banks Borrowed $1.2 Trillion From The Fed During The Financial Crisis

We now know exactly how much banks and financial institutions borrowed from the Federal Reserve during 2008 financial crisis — $1.2 trillion. According to Bloomberg, that's enough $1 bills to fill "539 Olympic-size swimming pools."

The biggest borrower, Morgan Stanley, got $107.3 billion, Citigroup and Bank of America followed close behind with $99.5 billion and $91.4 billion respectively.

These numbers, obtained by Bloomberg through Freedom of Information Act requests, also show that the Fed gave some very large loans to firms outside the US. Royland Bank of Scotland took $84.5 billion and Switzerland's UBS got $77.2 billion from the Fed.

So where is all this money now? The Fed says it had "no credit losses" on any of its emergency programs and Bloomberg points to a report from the NY Fed earlier this year which said the central bank "netted $13 billion in interest and fee income from the programs."